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Reclaiming the Promise

AFT president Randi Weingarten is calling on educators to join with parents and community partners throughout the country in an effort to fulfill our collective responsibility to enable individual opportunity for all children. The materials in this toolkit are intended to help leaders find out more about Reclaiming the Promise and take action in their own communities.

Drowning in Debt to Get a Degree

In her latest column appearing in the New York Times, AFT president Randi Weingarten writes about the challenge of making sure more students can earn college degrees at a time when the skyrocketing cost of higher education threatens to put it out of reach for many people. Read the full column.

Common Core: Do What It Takes Before High Stakes

In her latest column appearing in the New York Times, AFT president Randi Weingarten writes about the promise—and the possible pitfalls—of the new Common Core State Standards. If implemented properly—namely, by ensuring that frontline educators are prepared to teach these rigorous new standards—we can provide all children with the problem-solving, critical-thinking and teamwork skills they need to compete in today’s changing world. If not, they will end up in the dustbin of abandoned reforms. Read her full column.

Three-quarters of public school teachers surveyed support the Common Core State Standards, yet just 27 percent said their district has provided them with the tools and resources necessary to teach the standards, according to the results of a new AFT poll.

Healing Our Healthcare System

In her latest column appearing in the New York Times, AFT president Randi Weingarten talks about the accomplishments to date of the Affordable Care Act, even in its early stages. And she discusses the vital role that nurses and healthcare workers—the AFT is one of the largest unions of nurses in the country—play in enhancing patient care and improving the healthcare system. Read Weingarten's column.

Reading, Writing and Recklessness

In her most recent column appearing in the New York Times, AFT president Randi Weingarten writes about the effects on children and schools of years of budget cuts, the possible harm to programs that help disadvantaged families from the sequester, and the community action she was part of to protest widespread school closures. Read the full column.

The leaders of two labor organizations representing healthcare professionals announced on Feb. 14 that they have approved an affiliation agreement that will bring 34,000 registered nurses into the AFT, the largest union of professionals in the AFL-CIO.

From Grief to Action

Gun violence is a tragic, pervasive part of American life. Assassins’ bullets have felled presidents and national icons. Americans are 20 times more likely to be killed by a gun than residents of other developed countries. Even those who had grown numb to the everyday carnage were shaken last month by the unthinkable murder of the most innocent of innocents—young children in their classrooms. In the weeks since the tragedy in Newtown, Conn., more than 900 people in the United States have died from gun violence. This must end. Read Weingarten's column.

A new White House report that describes the impact of the recession on schools and our economy shows unequivocally that the quality of our students' education—in every community and at every level—has been harmed by the recession and the resulting teacher layoffs and cuts to critical programs, AFT president Randi Weingarten says.

Solution-driven unionism

In her latest column appearing in the New York Times, AFT president Randi Weingarten talks about "solution-driven unionism," which is rooted in solving problems, not finger pointing and false starts in school reform efforts. She discusses a number of examples from the AFT and its affiliates of how this is working in practice. "There are promising signs that collaboration, shared responsibility, and a focus on quality and equity can rise above futile education wars," she writes. "Solution-driven unionism in all its many forms points a way to overcoming some of the toughest challenges of the day for the benefit of our students and our communities." Read Weingarten's column.